[4] Studying opposite Dora Billington, the course gave her a life long fascination of pottery,[3] and according to Geoffrey Findlay of The Guardian, contributed "to the general revival of the arts and crafts movement in Britain in those interwar years.
[2][3] In 1936, she was offered employment as a designer at Royal Doulton in Lambeth, where she remained until 1939,[2] where she made full-bodied rough textured pots that were praised by connoisseurs for its "simplicity and modernity",[4] and exhibited at Heal's and Liberty and Peter Jones.
[3] Through a mutual friend in the early 1960s, Crossley-Holland was offered the opportunity to work as a personal assistant to the Maharana of Mewar at the Lake Palace Hotel, Udaipur for a year.
[2][4][5] She was one of the first to put on exhibits of John Makepeace's furniture, Lucie Rie's and Hans Coper's pottery, Wendy Ramshaw's jewellery and Peter Collingwood's weaving.
[5] Throughout the 1970s and earliy 1980s, Crossley-Holland was in a partnership with the Bradford Print Biennale,[3] and received enough capital from garden exhibitions designed by Harold Peto in the High Walls in Headington in 1984 and 1985.
[1] Marina Vaizey described Crossley-Holland as "small, bustling, and determined, rather like a fictionalised version of an inspiring but at times overwhelming sixth-form teacher" who had an "old-fashioned" appearance.
"[1] Upon her retirement, the director of the Crafts Council Victor Margie labelled her a "crusader and missionary",[5] and spoke of her "dogged persistence of a remarkable woman who chose to dedicate her working life to a better understanding of the visual arts.